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11/30/08

In case you didn't listen in or attend their show at WMUC last week, and ALSO missed the chance to download the Third Rail archive for the week--here's the chance for you to redeem yourself. Included are Deathammer's 2008 Demo and their full set (plus interview) here at WMUC. Pure Baltimore Thrash:

11/23/08

It's been a little while without a real update around here...we're both kind of swamped intermittently with school work and projects and I'm still attempting to rebuild my music library. We've also been busting our asses to get this Third Rail thing into gear (WHICH YOU SHOULD COME TO). Anyway--

Some of grindcore at it's earliest and finest...there's tons of worthless trivial details based around this band that I won't go into, but I will state these things:-They DEFINED grindcore.-They formed in the early 80s and were influenced by anarcho-punk and post-punk bands, most noted were Rudimentary Peni, Crass, SWANS, and Amebix.-Bill Steer WAS in the band, but only for two years (keep in mind they had already existed for half a decade at that point), then promptly left to turn his full attention to CARCASS.

Did I mention the show tonight is FREE??6PM-9PM (3 Hours before the Magrudergrind show in DC), FREE, two awesome bands--Black Skies from NC, DEATHAMMER from Baltimore, FREE, and so on.

Have trouble getting to the University of Maryland's Campus or not know how to?

Whether you're coming from the north or south, you'll want to be on 95. You want to take the 495 exit headed towards Silver Spring/Bethesda/US-1/College Park. After that, you'll take an exit on the left towards US-1/College Park/Weight Station/Carpool, and then take the exit (most likely on the right) towards US-1/College Park. From there merge onto 495 east, then take the Baltimore Avenue/US-1 exit. So, you're going to turn a slight right onto Route 1 and follow the road 'til you get to paint branch/campus drive, which you'll take a right on, and enter the campus.

11/20/08

11/16/08

Out of some strange occurance, great interest has risen around band in CP, and a few people have been lurking around our blog trying to d/l everything and anything we have to offer by the band...which would just, at this moment, be an EP and Blessed Black Wings. So I thought I'll upload my favorite (and their newest) record:

Of great relevance is the reformation...or rather, the extremely temporary reuniting of stoner gods 'Sleep' for a couple gigs out in Europe midway through next year:

Sleep will reunite for two performances as part of the All Tomorrows Parties UK Weekend 1: The Fans Strike Back festival May 8th through the 10th. The band will perform their album Holy Mountain in its entirety as well as tracks from Dopesmoker.

Remember when Carcass announced a couple reunion gigs in the UK for a couple of festivals--then months later announced their schedule for a handful of shows in the US--which eventually ballooned into over a dozen performances? We can only hope we get the same random luck with Sleep.

Also--Hasan from Death By Hanger brought this interview with "Today Is The Day"'s guitarist to my attention earlier today...he goes a great deal into Relapse Records' "business practices"...it's a good read.

11/14/08

So I got to thinkin', since we haven't posted sludge in awhile... I'd post some more things that have nothing to do with sludge. Here are some of my favorite math bands:

Tera Melos:I think a lot of people overlook this band, though their split album with By The End of Tonight has been making the rounds on the interwebs. Don't be fooled by the electronic opening, these guys will rock your balls off if you have the patience. Lots of stop-start jazz wackiness and some really inventive song-titles (Melody 2 is pretty catchy but I'm partial to Melody 4). The ridiculous time-signatures are offset by the warm quality of the music (Think Meshuggah's optimistic younger sister, who doesn't like metal or Phillip Glass as much but they still hang out because they came from the same vagina) Probably one of the more impenetrable yet likable bands I've ever listened to.

And here's that split album I mentioned, it too is good. If you have a chance to check out By The End of Tonight, I definitely suggest you do. Their material on this split is quality, and Tribute to Tigers (not seen here) is absolutely flawless:

Ahleuchatistas:In regards to playing style, these guys have a lot in common with Tera Melos. However, they are nowhere near as warm and upbeat as Tera Melos. The production is noisy, and the shifts in dynamics are more erratic and messy. This is not a criticism, however, as these qualities are what make Ahleuchatistas such an entertaining band. The name says it all: Jazz + Mexican Revolution. Definitely not for when you have a headache.

PlanetsAnother one of those goddamn math rock bands that think dressing up in silly costumes makes people like you more. If Lightning Bolt/Mindflayer/Black Pus taught us anything it's that... it works. Planets is a two man group (Bass and Drums, what else?) that play their live shows dressed up in white alien jumpsuits, however they are oddly composed most of the time. No theatrics here, just awesome instrumental math rock. One thing that I must draw to your attention is just how fucking catchy this band is. The music doesn't just shift directions, it grooves and flows in and out, and these guys just make it sound so easy. They don't seem as concerned with throwing in tricky-ness as they do with trying to get your head to bob while maintaining originality. Really, and I don't say this often (except for with Krallice...), this is one the best albums to come out this year. Buy this shit for sure if you like it.

Dysrhythmia:Man, where do I even start... Well, Colin Marston recently joined the band, so that's pretty sweet. Basically, this band combines everything good about all of the above bands. Instrumental (really, vocals just mess up music like this), jazzy but not over-the-top, calm and collected but still hard as a blind man in a fish market. Finally, and most importantly, Colin Marston is now in the band. This album speaks for itself, and you really must buy it. But you're not going to buy it are you, you ungrateful bastard? So here you go, enjoy it before Lars comes to your house to rapes you over 10 dollars.

11/10/08

So the drive is dead. Formatted; lost data all officially gone. This gives me an opportunity to have a fully organized library, but things are looking skimpy right now, so I might call on you guys for help in finding some of my old stuff every now and then. Thanks again for the tips everyone--it is with god now.

11/9/08

So when I was transferring my music to my new drive, before it decided to die on me, I managed to copy artists Z through Y--so looking through my new drive today, you can imagine how happy I was to find that I stored all of my Frank Zappa albums under Zappa. Inside I found an album I've pretty much forgotten about and neglected, mostly due to the awful job whoever originally torrented it did with titling the tracks and naming the files. So I've gone and retitled and organized the entire album, changed things from "1(2)whatevertrack" to "(Act 1.2) 02 Whatever Track" and have since given the album some love for the first time in a couple of years.

If you don't know Zappa's solo work this is an EXCELLENT place to start. It's a concept album based around "Joe", who starts a garage band with his friends, and it follows him through his hopeless journey of trying to hold onto his girlfriend, joining a religion (the church of appliantology), acquiring an "appliance fetish" (if you can call it that), then being thrown in jail for giving a certain robot a certain golden shower, climaxing with him being raped in jail by a bunch of detergent-line-snorting record execs. It is awesome.

11/8/08

Oh my fucking Jesus Christ, this band is awesome. If you like Burzum's early shenanigans or Ulver's more straightforward (but not too straightforward...) black metal, or if you're just interested in what a black metal side project with Colin Marston (Behold... The Arctopus, Dysrhythmia) and Mick Barr (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm) sounds like, you need to check this out. Hell, the unreadable band logo should be enough to convince you that these guys don't fuck around.

High speed, mind-fuck tremolo riffing (you know that's why you like Black Metal in the first place) is the name of the game here, but there's definitely a few throwbacks to these two guys' tech-metal roots. The riffing changes so constantly that you feel like you're being thrown back and forth between two screaming beasts, all while some dude bellows at you from behind the mix. One of the best albums this year so far, hands down.

11/5/08

So one of the very worst things that could happen, has happened...again. I recently procured a dependable 400 gig hard drive to replace my shoddy 200 gig and started attempting to move over files sometime Monday Night. Of course the computer ran across a corrupt mp3 file and stopped the copying process, so I just decided to forget about it and try again a couple days later. So I come back home to College Park, hook up my laptop and hard drive, and try to boot the drive...and it tells me that the drive needs to be formatted. Missing are the drives former name and even specs, like size, which it specifies as being 0 bytes. This has happened to me once before, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I did last time.

The irony of this situation is eating away at me. If you have any ideas (such as utilities or whatnot) of how to recover my drive, short of paying some asshole 200 dollars to recover my data, let me know.